i3 330 v i5 430 v i5 520

Right i need to get a new laptop its for uni and I want to use it to play modern games to a good standard. All the laptops im looking at have 4gb ram and ATI HD 5650 1gb dedicated graphics card so the real thing to decide now is the processor. The Acer 5740 has a i3 330 processor and ive been looking at the sony E series with either the i5 430 or the i5 520 processor but the 430 sony is £60 more and the 520 sony is £110 than the acer.
I had a look on
Notebookcheck: Mobile Processors - Benchmarklist
and from looking at the number (even though i dont really understand them that much) it seems that they are, suprisingly, evenly spaced with proformance although there are two tests (Dhrystone & Whetstone) which seem to suggest that the 520 is considerably better?
Am I going to see a noticable difference between the 330, 430 and the 520 for what Im going to use it for?
Cheers

 

Video games are usually GPU dependent. My i5 520M and 5650 combo can play just about any game. New games I have to stick to Med. Settings for most of them.

 

The i5-420 I think is the best deal of the ones you listed.

 

Don't trust the benchmarks on Notebookcheck too much. In any case, for gaming the i3-330M will be good enough, but the i5-430M's Turbo Boost means it's a decent jump of ~19% in clock speeds. The i5-520M, on the other hand, has another ~5% higher clock speed on two cores and ~16% higher clock speed on one, as well as AES-NI.

I would say that the i5-430M Sony is worth £60 over the Acer if you think the Sony is a nicer laptop (specs aside), because you get a nice clock speed boost to go with it, but another £50 extra for the i5-520M would be particularly worth it only if you do a lot of encryption (which is where AES-NI helps a lot), or if you do a lot of very CPU-intensive tasks that only use a single core (which you clearly don't).

 

I'd say go for an i5 processor. The turbo boost function is quite helpful.

 

of those processors listed hands down best price/performance ratio is the i5-430

 

i would get the acer instead of sony...its 5650 is less likely to be downclocked compared to the sony... as for processor , get the i3 in the acer.. if u need a better CPU later on 1-2 years later , u can upgrade urself...but the GPU is more important.. keeping in mind what i have said , get the acer.

 

thanks for the info guys helped alot!
I didnt even know the i3 didnt have turbo boost, i just assumed that was a standard feature of all the new i processors
well i bite the bullet and ordered the sony with the i5 430 after a "bit" of thinking
I forgot to mention aswell that sony was having a deal on last week that you got a free blu-ray player upgrade meaning £60 extra for a better processor and a blu-ray (which i will never use but hey atleast its there ) haha
only thing to do now is to twiddle my thumbs for the 6-7 weeks while sony make it for me!
thanks again

 

well if u like sony... but acer would have been better for games as the 5650 would haven't been downclocked like it is most likely in the sony..

 

I think both have downclocked 5650s, with the Acer's at 550MHz and the Sony's possibly at 450MHz. In any case, you should be fine to clock either at 650MHz instead.

 

Yeah I have read that the sony is at 450MHz, didnt check the acer, but I did read on here that you can increase that fairly easily and from the people who have done it no problems have been found by doing that yet so should be ok i hope
does the 100/200MHz difference make a significant difference?

 

yes.. its a 25%-50% core OC which should work if u have a good chip but i wouldn't bet on it.. you might want to try the sony and if u can't OC much RMA it and look for something else.